Empathy: the Superpower Your Company Can’t Afford to Ignore

Customer service environment is high-speed, high-stress. But there’s one quality that consistently sets great contact centers apart: empathy. Not call time. Not script adherence. Empathy. Whether a customer is calling about a missed delivery, a denied claim, or a tax refund delay, what they want more than anything is to feel heard, understood, and respected. Empathy builds trust, lowers escalations, and turns one-time callers into loyal customers. And yet, most contact centers struggle to teach it. So why is empathy so hard to train? And more importantly, how can we get better at it? Let’s break it down.

The Empathy Gap in Customer Service

A study by PwC revealed that 59% of consumers feel companies have lost touch with the human element of customer service. That disconnect is costing brands billions. When customers don’t feel understood, they don’t just leave, they tell others. And in an age of online reviews and viral complaints, poor emotional intelligence can spark massive reputational damage.

Yet empathy training is rarely prioritized. Many contact centers focus on speed, compliance, and performance metrics, important, yes, but incomplete. You can hit every checkbox and still leave a customer feeling dismissed.

Here’s what’s missing: Empathy turns transactions into experiences.

Why Empathy is So Hard to Train

You can’t just hand someone a script and expect them to feel. Empathy is situational. It’s about how agents respond to emotion in real time. That makes it difficult to teach through traditional methods like reading manuals or watching training videos. Role-playing is one of the best ways to teach empathy, but most teams don’t have the time or resources to do it consistently. And even when they do, feedback is subjective and often delayed. That’s where AI Coaching changes the game.

The SymTrain Approach

Let’s look at a real-world example: An accounts company needed to improve empathy and objection handling in sensitive financial conversations. Traditional training methods weren’t cutting it. Agents were technically accurate, but emotionally off. The company wanted agents to practice active listening, show ownership, and respond with care during difficult conversations. But how do you simulate emotional nuance at scale? With SymTrain, a simulation-based coaching tool that helps agents practice real conversations, build soft skills, and get instant feedback.

With SymTrain, the company was able to:

• Practice empathy, tone, and ownership in realistic scenarios
• Train with real-life scripts and objection-based simulations
• Score performance automatically and coach based on emotional impact

And the results?

• Politeness score skyrocketed to 98%
• Empathy and ownership scores grew consistently week over week
• Agents began using emotional cues and polite language proactively, not reactively
• Experienced agents saw a 3% increase in objection handling success

“SymTrain does exactly the kind of training we would put together ourselves.”

Final Thoughts

The ability to communicate with compassion should never be treated as optional. In the moments that matter, when customers are anxious, upset, or confused, it’s empathy that defines the experience.

With SymTrain, contact centers can go beyond the script and train agents for the emotional reality of the job.
In just days, your team can start building the muscle memory needed to deliver human-centered conversations with confidence and care.

If your contact center is ready to treat empathy not as a buzzword, but as a core competency, let’s talk.